NatWest faces AGM showdown over climate backtracking

NatWest is at risk of an embarrassing showdown at its shareholder meeting this week, as investors and leading scientists call for an urgent reversal of what they describe as “climate backtracking”.

Campaigners, including ShareAction, are calling for protest votes against the bank’s chair, Rick Haythornthwaite, at its annual meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

The call is part of efforts to hold the board to account after NatWest watered down restrictions on lending to the oil and gas sector, and dropped some decarbonisation targets “without robust explanation”, according to the campaigners.

Investors including the Church of England have already thrown their weight behind the campaign, saying they will vote against the reappointment of board members.

ShareAction will present letters at the AGM, including a statement signed by investors with $1.4tn in assets. Signatories include the Church of England Pensions Board, Rathbones Investment Management, EdenTree Investment Management, Nest, and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund.

The statement calls for the bank to meet investors within the next three months to discuss its future direction on climate strategy.

ShareAction will also deliver a letter signed by 70 climate scientists and experts calling on NatWest to “show leadership and reverse the backtracking on climate commitments”.

Recent changes to the bank’s climate policy have included dropping a commitment not to lend to any oil and gas companies that either lacked a credible transition plan or failed to report their overall carbon emissions.

The bank has removed a commitment not to finance oil and gas exploration and production companies where most of their assets were outside the UK. It also abandoned targets covering aluminium, cement, and iron and steel.

“NatWest has undermined public trust and created a clear path for continued financing of a global fossil fuel economy,” the letter signed by climate experts will say.

Jeanne Martin, head of banking programme at ShareAction, said: “NatWest spent years presenting itself as a climate leader, but quietly rolling back fossil fuel restrictions shows the board is heading in the wrong direction.

“This kind of backtracking has real consequences, fuelling a climate crisis that is already damaging homes, health and livelihoods, and creating long-term risks for the economy.”

Martin said that at the AGM the board would hear from “concerned investors as well leading climate scientists, underlining why retreating from climate commitments is both dangerous and short‑sighted”.

A NatWest group spokesperson said the bank had retained interim targets to at least half its climate impact compared with 2019, while it worked towards longer-term ambitions of net zero emissions from its financing by 2050.